[Sussex] Noob

[Geoffrey Teale]

Angelo,

It's very common, people are afraid of things they don't know,
especially if they haven't heard of them and can't see adverts for them
in their paper every week.

The first question you have to ask them is, how well do they really know
windows?  What would they do if something went wrong in that case?  The
answer is they would ring you up and ask you how to fix it.

I've taken a fairly hard line with people I help.  If they want me to
support them then they have to take my advise.  I have the following
ground rules for people who want my help in a non-commercial setup:

 - I am not prepared to source, install or support illegal (i.e.
unlicensed) copies of commercial software (be that Windows or anything
else) under any circumstances.

- I will not buy closed source software for (or on behalf of) people if
their is a suitable Free Software alternative.

 - I won't do support on systems with which I don't actively work. (So
generally I won't get involved in helping people out with Windows
problems on a regular basis - I'll do one offs if it suits me, but I
always make the effort to point out how they could avoid such problems).

With those rules in place, most people still want me to help them out
and after discussion will have a Linux box.  We are migrating a lot of
non-technical people from Windows to Ubuntu here - it's going well, and
mostly people are keen to try more once they get to grips with the
basics.  It's actually quite easy to get people onto Linux if you can
get them to try it.  Here the key was that our staff have exposure to
our product, which is Linux based and other open source technologies
(Twiki, OpenOffice.org, FireFox). From your side all you really need to
do is:

0. Get them to try it.  After 1 week most people don't want to go back
(notable exception - gamers, if that's really what they want advise them
to get a PS2 or X-Box instead).

1. Be available to support them for the first couple of weeks.  99% of
the calls you'll get will be from people who have figured out already
what to do but are afraid to do it because they think the machine will
explode if they get it wrong.  Which leads nicely to...

2. Reassure them.  Tell them that once it's setup its much, much harder
for them to do any serious damage to their Linux installation than it is
to an equivalent Windows install.  Get them to feel happy experimenting
and you've half way there.  


-- 
Geoffrey Teale <gteale at cmedltd.com>
Cmed Technology